SQA Past Paper: English : Silent Watchers of Paris
by YouGottaSingAlong
Summary: We actually finished a paper in English! Key: write fan fiction discreetly. Lonely Assassins, and Doctor referenced.


Title: SQA Past Paper; English – Silent Watchers of Paris

Summary: We actually finished a paper in English!!! Key: write fan fiction discreetly. Lonely Assassins, and Doctor referenced.

A/N: Short oneshot[s] by **OutCold** and **YouGottaSingAlong.** Written in English from a SQA Past Paper. Neither writer saw the others writing during this. Only one was actually deliberately writing fan fiction. Both OS named By YouGottaSingAlong. Betaed and typed by YouGottaSingAlong

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YouGottaSingAlong:

3) **Write a short story** using the following opening:

From a great height he watched. Cars, buses, boats, people.

Slowly he drew his plans...

You should develop **setting** and **character** as well as **plot**.

OutCold:

4) **Write** **in any way you choose** using the picture opposite as your inspiration.

Picture = cityscape of Paris with stone gargoyle-y thing in foreground

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3: Trapped

From a great height he watched. Cars, buses, boats, people.

Slowly he drew his plans as he crouched forward, observing the cityscape. He waited, watched and waited, as the view laid out below him altered; bridges were built and pulled down, the architecture modernised before regressing back to the style of years before. Trees grew, lost their leaves, gained them again in what could be an endless cycle until cut short by an axe or chainsaw breaking their bows and slicing through their trunk; a year later a tarmac road might have taken its place, industry defeating nature always. Cars crashed, bike braked, but asphalt anchored their tyres as they screeched to a stop. Every day. And every day, he sat here, and watched, and waited.

He had watched as monstrous deeds were committed in the shadows below, by man and beast alike. He had watched as heroes ran and evil laughed in its face. All the time he was trapped here in his solitude. He longed to stroke his fine goatee, to lick his lips, to feed off his Time. But his nature and _that man_ had robbed him of these options. Was it his fault he had been born to this race? Was it his fault he had to feed? Was it his fault the man could and would stop him? And did he blame the man for what he had done?

Perhaps you could answer yes to all. Perhaps no. Yes to some, or no to most; it made little difference now. All that mattered to his hard mind was breaking free of these bonds. The bond he had been signed to forced him to watch the vile actions of the world below, unable to move, or shield his eyes. Stopped by his own kin. Rendered immobile by a curse that had followed him from birth and would remain with him for eternity, but this was not enough for the man. The man wanted him here always, watching over this godforsaken city; trapped as he saw all the movement below, the passage of Time, the natural lives. It filled his rock vessels with deepest loathing and lust.

He was waiting for the winds. When a storm brewed strong enough – entwinded with the temporal gusts – to rock the foundations of the Parisian structure. That was when he could make a single lurch, when he could put all the energy he had mustered beneath him into one tumbling movement that might send him plummeting to the cobbled streets below.

His plan waited for the winds. And he watched the city.

Hungry.

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4: Eternity in the City

The statues were the silent guardians of the city. They, and they alone watched over it, through every year, every rising and setting of the sun, watching through every hour of the day and night with their ever-open eyes. The waters of the river rushed continuously through babbling the story of their journey. The people can hear, but they don't listen; the statues strain their deaf ears. The city, like all of its kind, never sleeps. The shadows of the night give shelter to the worst of human nature, the darkness shrouds them and protects the deepest of their sins, and those gargoyles, those guardians, they see it all. Trapped by each other in eternity - the most silent of witnesses hide the underbelly of the city, it has been that way for as long as anyone remembers.

The sunlight cleanses the streets of blood, and life flows through. Shops open and tourists pour over. They are one different dimension in themselves; they see the city they've read about, the city they want to see. Architecture and art. Music and history. These things are there of course, and someone may as well appreciate them while they last.

Summer, Autumn, Winter, Spring... the seasons change nothing but the weather, the city is constant, a law unto itself. The artists call it beautiful, the purists call it corrupted. Others, and Lords say it can be both, and it is.

More than anything; it is alive. Cars and boats course through it, the entire population is engaged in eternal conversation, the words are lost, but the meaning never is.

No living soul can see it as the statues do. Years of watching. Centuries. To everyone else, all has changed, and to them nothing has.

This is Paris, and they are watching.


End file.
